Over the course of my career I have participated in numerous public scholarship ventures. “Public scholarship” refers to any endeavor that aims to leverage scholarly expertise for diverse public audiences outside the academic environment, through direct outreach, media engagement, or open access digital publishing.
My particular expertise lies in open access digital publishing; for three years I was coordinator of the Mizan initiative housed at Boston University and generous funded by ILEX Foundation. Mizan’s mission is to “encourage informed public discourse and interdisciplinary scholarship on the culture and history of Muslim societies”; Mizan is first and foremost a digital public scholarship platform, but also features an open access peer reviewed journal and an associated book series published by ILEX Foundation in association with Harvard University Press.
During my tenure as coordinator of the Mizan initiative, I published numerous essays that addressed contemporary issues and debates and aimed to speak to both academic and nonspecialist audiences. I have also written open access, nonspecialist essays for a number of other platforms, including Marginalia, Bible Odyssey, and IQSAweb, the blog of the International Qur’anic Studies Association.
Public scholarship pieces on Mizan:
“Our Apocalypse Problem from Baghdadi to Bannon (Part 2): Between Radical Jihad and the Radical Right”
Mizan, April 27, 2017
“Our Apocalypse Problem from Baghdadi to Bannon (Part 1): The Mainstreaming of Apocalyptic Politics in America”
Mizan, April 13, 2017
“We Are All Children of the Atom: Marvel’s X-Men Gold Controversy, the Qurʾān, and the Problem of Diversity”
(with A. David Lewis and Hussein Rashid)
Mizan, April 10, 2017
“Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam? as Disciplinary Critique: Charting a Way Forward for Islamic Studies”
Mizan, January 24, 2017
“Introduction: Conflict and Convergence in Late Antiquity”
Introduction to special forum “Conflict and Convergence in Late Antiquity: Judaism and Christianity at the Origins of Islam”
Mizan, November 11, 2015
Essays and reviews on other platforms:
“Between Jew and Muslim: Observations on Cynthia Baker’s Jew from the Perspective of Islamic Studies”
Marginalia, June 6, 2017
“Mary in the Qur’an”
Bible Odyssey, June 2014
“Rethinking Late Antiquity—A Review of Garth Fowden, Before and After
Muḥammad: The First Millennium Refocused”
IQSAweb, March 17, 2014
“Translation and Exegesis: Travis Zadeh’s The Vernacular Qur’an”
IQSAweb, January 7, 2013